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“We’ll let you know,” I said.

“Okay,” he said. When he left, Anne and I quickly agreed that this was the guy for us. We signed on.

A few weeks later Bob induced Max Gordon, the legendary co-owner of the Blue Angel and the Village Vanguard, the jazz spot on Seventh Avenue, to come down to see us. When Max left, Bob said, “He likes you. You’re going on at the Blue Angel.” The Angel had made big names of Mike and Elaine, Shelley Berman, Mort Sahl, Carol Burnett, and Vaughn Meader.

Six weeks after Bob first spoke with us we were heading for a Sunday-night special guest audition at the Blue Angel. I wondered if this was going to be another Bon Soir disaster. As we pulled up in our ‘56 Chrysler, Sonny, the doorman, who’d been at the Angel since forever, said, “You’re gonna make it tonight, kids. Let me park it.” As he slid in behind the wheel, I prayed it wouldn’t stall.

We walked through the fabled doors on East 55th Street. Bobby Short’s trio was uptempoing “I’ve Got Your Number.” The room was packed. Max Gordon, a small, balding man from Eugene, Oregon, met us and escorted us backstage.

“How do you guys feel?”

“Nervous,” Anne said.

“It’s natural,” Max said softly. “Carol Burnett felt the same way. She went on for me on a Sunday and CBS saw her.” She became a star, and it could happen to us, he seemed to be saying.

“Listen, you can do fifteen minutes and we’ll see. I love that thing you do, ‘Jonah and the Whale.’ Who wrote that?”

“We did it based on my uncle,” I told him.

Meader was onstage, winding up his presidential press conference, taking questions from the audience.

“You’ll follow him. You can do it, I’m sure,” Max said.

The audience and Meader were in synch. His Kennedy was more an essence than an impression. It was brilliant because he captured Kennedy’s psyche. The audience wouldn’t let him off. They kept asking one more question.

“He’s a tough act to follow,” Max said. “You have to go on right away. Otherwise they want to pay their checks, and they’re walking out while you’re on. You gotta grab ‘em. I’ll see ya.”

He disappeared as Meader finished. I saw Henry Morgan, the acerbic and hilarious radio wit, who’d been at the bar, slip into the back of the room.

“Ladies and gentlemen, for the first time at the Blue Angel, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara.” We walked on. Anne’s opening line, “Ladies and gentlemen,” spoken with hesitancy as if she was not really sure they were ladies and gentlemen, was immediately picked up on. “We’re just two people—”

“—Actors,” I interjected. It brought a laugh.

“—Who do these things up here.” She sounded like someone studying
to be a nun. “Yeah, you see, what we do up here in front of you allows you to get in touch with your own feelings.”

“This is called catharsis,” I said.

“And you feel better afterwards,” Anne said.

Tremendous laugh. Bigger than we ever got at Phase II. I instantly realized that in an uptown nightclub, when people pay big money, they laugh louder. These people could have seen us last night for a buck at the Phase II. We went over big and stayed on for thirty minutes.

When it was over, whistles, cheers. They clapped with their hands above their heads like they wanted us to know it. They’re all hip. We’ve made it. The Upper East Side chic. It’s the way I dreamed it. “You’re clever, witty … we love you.” Somebody shouted, “A little like Mike and Elaine, but hey, these guys are married!”

We walked off. The room was still applauding.

“Go ahead, take a bow,” Max Gordon said.

Max hired us and we ended up working at the Angel off and on for fourteen weeks with Phyllis Diller, Barbra Streisand, Rolf Harris, The Tarriers, and Carol Sloan. Sometimes we’d open, sometimes go on second, and sometimes last. We earned $300 a week. Bob Chartoff had taken us out of the coffeehouse and up to the glamorous East Side. Each night, Sonny the doorman parked our ‘56 Chrysler, and at 1
A.M
. we returned to our Washington Heights apartment at Riverside Drive and 160th Street, where Ed Meara, now retired from the American Radiator Company, baby-sat Amy.

We needed new material. We had to come up with something for people who stayed for the second show. When we were on first, they would sometimes stick around to see if we’d really ad-libbed it the first time. Bob Chartoff asked if we wanted to hear some stuff that two guys named Kander and Ebb had written.

“We can do our own stuff. We don’t need anybody,” I said. “Besides, I never heard of them.” They had not yet written “New York, New York” or
Cabaret
.

In one year, from 1961 to 1962, we’d gone from the Phase II on Bleecker Street to the Blue Angel on East 55th and then got our biggest break,
The Ed Sullivan Show
.

When Bob Chartoff told us we were booked on Sullivan it shocked us. We were right out of a coffeehouse. Is this the direction we wanted to go?
I asked myself. The truth was, we had no idea where we were going with our lives, let alone our careers.

I wondered how many Sawyer Falk students got to do comedy on the “Really Big Show”? I’d been a kid watching vaudeville stars, and now Anne and I would be on the same bill with the greats. But, I asked myself, Do I really belong up here with, say, Jimmy Durante?

I asked Bob, “How did this happen?”

Ed Sullivan saw the kinescope of “Jonah and the Whale” on Merv Griffin’s show and loved it.

I also had to believe Ed connected with Anne and me. His wife Sylvia was Jewish. But we knew this was the big break—and we had to deliver.

One afternoon, around that time, I took a walk through Central Park, going over new material in my head. I left the park and walked out on the Upper East Side. I passed a brownstone that had a sign that read Metropolitan Psychoanalytic Institute. I rang the bell and asked to see someone. I didn’t have an appointment, just a look on my face that said,
Take this guy in immediately
.

I was ushered in to meet a gentleman in his sixties who wore thick-lensed glasses and a business suit, and spoke with a soft German accent. It was like meeting Freud himself. I knew on the spot that I would like this fatherly, sensitive man who, just on sight, knew I needed help. Somebody who could figure out why I was sad, weepy, and fearful just when we were signed to do three Ed Sullivan shows.

“Why are you here?” he asked.

“I’m sad.”

“How sad?”

“Very.”

“Do you want to kill yourself?”

The thought had never entered my mind until that moment. I realized instantly that this was the reason I was being seen so quickly. I was somewhat amazed that anyone would care. It dawned on me how lucky I was that I didn’t want to kill myself. It lifted me just to realize that.

“What do you do?” he asked.

“I’m a comedian.”

“Oh,” he said. It seemed to intrigue him. “Are you funny?”

“Yes, believe it or not, when I’m on stage—so I think.”

“Are you working?”

“Yes.”

“Where are you playing now?”

“The Blue Angel,” I said.

“What’s the problem?” he asked.

“I freeze before starting a sketch. It started a while ago. It’s very upsetting. I must come to see you.”

“I think we can help you,” he said.

His manner was comforting, like that of a grandfather. I immediately felt a great affection toward this man. His accent itself made me feel safe. A Freudian accent is very reassuring, I told myself. This man through his knowledge would take care of me.

“Can you afford fifteen dollars a week?” he asked.

“I think so,” I said.

“And come for therapy twice a week?”

Twice? That bad, I thought. “Yes,” I said, thrilled that I could see this man twice a week. I felt better already.

“You’re going to treat me,” I said gratefully.

“No, not me,” he said. “You need a better detective than me. I teach, and the man you will have is also a teacher. I’m sure it will work out.”

Who could be better than Dr. Freud himself?

My seeing a shrink was admitting that I was now overwhelmed by forces I could not see or understand. I was desperate enough to put my life in the hands of a stranger. I needed someone who could help me untangle knots that I had tied myself into and I couldn’t unravel.

I had read Erich Fromm. I had read
The Inner Conflict
by Karen Horney and identified with every psychological dysfunction described in the book. I finally had to stop reading.

My hangup was the hesitancy that came over me before I would start a sketch. It would stop me from saying my first line. Why was this happening when we were doing so well? What if I froze on the Sullivan show?

I wanted the doctor to zap it. I needed a kernel of understanding of what was causing this and an insight that would free me from the terror I was now experiencing. Help me, doctor. Give me a mantra that I can use. One word that will free me to soar creatively like I know I can.

All this wonderful material we had written—and me frozen. Free me of this existential hell I’ve put myself into.

When I entered into analysis I wondered whether another human being could help me, just by talking. If so, did his brain really understand mine? Did he ever experience this himself? I somehow assumed that he had traveled the same route and therefore could help me.

My newly assigned psychiatrist looked like a leading man. We talked about my Jewish background, and he told me what it was like growing up Catholic in the Midwest. Wow, not Jewish, not from New York: a new look in shrinks. The all-American type. All my self-hate at being Jewish—repressed, of course—could come out just by looking at this guy. If only I could be like him. Become the all-American Jew.

He sat in front of me in a chair. I too was sitting in a chair. (Where was the couch? What do I want for fifteen bucks?) He taught other psychiatrists, he told me.

The phone would ring during our sessions. “Pardon me,” the doctor would say, and he would take the call. Why would he do this, I asked myself. Is this part of the treatment? Was he testing me? Why not ask him, I wondered to myself. Of course he’ll say, “Yes, it’s part of the treatment, I’m glad you asked that.” So I didn’t mention it. I realize now that if I could have mentioned it then, I wouldn’t have had to be in therapy in the first place.

I also wondered whether I’d be treated differently if I were paying twenty-five bucks a session. Would he have shut off the phone?

I droned on about my childhood—growing up poor, the Depression. How for the first time I was making some money.

“What’s wrong with money?” he asked.

I found it difficult to answer that question.

“What’s bothering you? What’s wrong with money?” he asked again.

He’s going to raise the fee, I said to myself. I’ve been here twice and he’s sucked me in. He’s going to want twenty bucks next time.

“Tell me about money,” he persisted.

I exhaled deeply. “I got this thing about money,” I said. “I feel like….”

“So you hate money,” he said. “You know where that comes from, don’t you?”

“Where?”

“Money is the root of all evil. ‘The poor shall inherit the Kingdom of Heaven.’ That’s what it says in the Bible.”

“But I love money,” I said. “Someday I’m going to have a lot of it. I’d
like to give you a lot of money. Buy you a town house,” I blurted out, feeling like a jerk.

On our many sessions we talked about everything but the act. I was afraid to bring it up. I wondered if he had been down to see us perform at the Blue Angel. It seemed to me that that would be uppermost in his mind. He could see firsthand what I was referring to when I mentioned the freeze.

I asked him if he’d seen Anne and me perform.

“No,” he said.

I told myself he’s lying; he had seen us but didn’t want to tell me.

“How could you be treating a comedian without watching his work?” I asked.

“I’d rather not see your work,” he said.

“Why?” I asked weakly.

“I’m treating the whole person, not the performer,” the doctor said.

Was he telling me if I were emotionally more stable I wouldn’t be on the stage? That my need to perform was a symptom of some emotional sickness? Was I the character in the old circus joke: A man is sweeping up elephant manure; somebody tells him to quit. “What,” he says, “and give up showbiz?”

I thought if becoming a great performer means I’m nuts, then I want to be nuts. I want to be
more
nuts. The more nuts the more success. I want to be the nuttiest comedian in the world. My real trouble is I’m not sick enough. But I never said that to the shrink. Instead, I thought he was informing me that he was just dying to see me do my stuff but was repressing his feelings.

I looked up. His eyes were shut. He was dozing. “You’re asleep,” I said, surprising myself with my frankness as his eyes blinked open. How long had he been out, I wondered. Now, I wondered whether the time I’d spent spewing out my deepest secrets had any meaning at all. When I asked why he’d been asleep, his answer was that I hadn’t been saying anything interesting. Being the sickee, I could possibly agree with that.

Was I a boring patient, which also made me a bore?

The treatments continued. During one session I asked, heart in mouth, “By the way, did you see us on
Sullivan
last Sunday?” We had been on for over a year. I was hesitant, afraid to hear his opinion. Maybe
he hated us, or hadn’t watched the show. Then I would have really hated him, and myself for asking.

“Is that important to what’s going on here?” he asked.

In my mind it was the most important thing in the world, but I couldn’t bring myself to say it. If he had seen me on
Ed Sullivan
and said he hated me, I would have been destroyed. That bothered me.

I readily accepted his non-answer without pushing it further.

When he’d asked about hobbies, I confided that I had none. He listened intently as I proudly listed the many pastimes I’d scrupulously avoided. I don’t play bridge or poker. I don’t play golf or tennis, and I don’t go dancing. “I don’t even go to the movies,” I said.

“Why not?”

“I’m not in any of them.”